


Pattern

by Haely_Potter



Series: Bending the Universe [13]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen, mentions of rose tyler - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:38:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haely_Potter/pseuds/Haely_Potter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rory notices a pattern of roses and wolves on the TARDIS.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pattern

Rory noticed things. He wasn’t an idiot like the Doctor sometimes seemed to think he was. (Why else would he notice coma patients walking around town?)

He was a people person in a way that Amy wasn’t. Amy was too… herself all the time, too Scottish in an English village, too opinionated, too open about her imaginary friend the Raggedy Doctor. He himself was genial and quiet and got along with everyone.

These two facts brought him closer to the Doctor than his wife or daughter ever got.

It started on his first stay in the TARDIS. He explored without Amy sometimes, she said she’d already explored that part of the ship or that she wanted to go to a particular room to relax after running for her life.

The TARDIS was huge. He got lost the first time he went exploring but luckily found his way back to familiar places before he died of dehydration or something. The second time he wrote down every turn he took, making a catalogue of the rooms he found (there was a huge aquarium in one room and another room seemed to be dedicated to post stamps).

On the third time he went exploring alone, he noticed a pattern in the TARDIS. Roses and wolves appeared everywhere. Rose tea in the kitchen, rose soap in the bathrooms (all bathrooms, even Amy and Rory’s personal one, right beside their preferred soap), rose patterned wallpapers, rose doorknobs, rose coloured curtains in fake windows, rose carvings in wooden surfaces, a room full of real, growing rose bushes. The wolf wasn’t quite as obvious, a book on wolves mating habits on the coffee table, a painting of a wolf, them landing in China when the year of the Wolf began, helping Brothers Grimm decide what the wolf in their stories should be called (the Doctor was abnormally pale after that adventure...), hearing wolves howl inside the TARDIS some nights...

He didn’t bring it up with the Doctor.

The second time he was on the TARDIS he didn’t really have time for playing Nancy Drew, as he was on his honeymoon.

But on the third time he hit the jack pot.

He found living quarters, much like his and Amy’s, except they were more... elaborate.

And the rose and wolf patterns were nowhere to be seen.

Except on one door with the word _Bad Wolf_ and a red rose.

There were pictures, photos and paintings of four people in the room. Above the fireplace (A fireplace!) there was a large painting of three of the four: a man with an unfortunate nose, big ears and the bluest eyes Rory had ever seen, dressed in a leather jacket? Another man was there too, dressed properly for early 19th century, and Rory, even as a straight male, admitted he was rather good looking. The woman in the painting had blond hair and an empire style dress as was fashion at the time, and she had the sweetest smile Rory had ever seen.

On either side of the painting there was a holographic image of the same trio. On the bookshelf there were normal 21st century photos of the man with the leather jacket and the blond girl in all kinds of places and time eras. There were also photos of the blond girl and a man with gravity defying hair in a brown pinstriped suit.

But there were no photos of the Doctor.

Around the lounge women’s clothes were scattered, like the person who left them intended to come back someday soon. There was a gossip magazine on the coffee table, obviously still unfinished, as was Dickens’ _A Tale of Two Cities_. The Harry Potter -series was neatly in the bookshelf, as was the movies Rory recognised along with some Harry Potter movies that were obviously yet to be made, maybe in some twenty years or so, in Rory’s timeline. There was even a Harry Potter TV-series, about ten years from the future.

Rory wandered to the kitchen to investigate and opened every door to every cupboard. There were bananas and tea and marmalade and jam and baking ingredients and something for a quick breakfast in them, and if Rory hadn’t heard some of the Doctor’s comments about domestics, he’d have said this was where he lived. Or had lived, once upon a time.

He decided to give up investigating _this_ part of TARDIS. It seemed... too personal.

After that foray into the forgotten living quarters, Rory started noticing how photos of the blond girl were all over the frequently visited parts of TARDIS. The girl was on a magnet on the fridge door in the communal kitchen Amy and Rory shared with the Doctor. There was a statue of her in the Library under the name of Fortuna. The photos of her were cleverly hidden among photos of Rory, Amy, River and the Doctor.

One night after they’d found out Mels was actually Melody and River Song, Rory couldn’t sleep. Amy was long since gone to the arms of Morpheus and Rory didn’t want to disturb her. He got up, put on his dressing gown and started to wander the TARDIS.

He’d been wandering close to twenty minutes and was contemplating turning back when he heard the unmistakeable sound of the Doctor talking. Curious, he continued forward and came to the living quarters he’d found almost a year past.

He cracked the door open to find the Doctor sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace, talking to a live sized holographic image of the blond girl.

“...and there they were, pirates! Pirates, Rose! Not as cool as the Indians we met in the 700 A.D. America with Jack, but still, pirates! Then there was the time TARDIS was a woman. Oh, I think you would have liked her, eccentric as she was... She misses you. It’s all over, the roses and the wolves. She probably thinks she’s being subtle with the rose soap or the photos of us and Jack in the galley, but she’s really not. I miss you, Rose. Please, one more impossible thing. One more impossible return.” The Doctor changed from enthusiastic to nostalgic to sad to pleading. “You’ve done it before, crossed the Void and jumped dimensions, you can do it again. You said “Forever” once. I still believe in you. Please, come back.”

Rory saw him reach for the holographic image of who he assumed was Rose, and stop just short of distorting the image. “Still just an image,” he heard the Doctor mutter bitterly as his hand fell back to his lap. “Always just an image.”

The holographic image dissolved.

“Come in, Rory, I know you’re at the door.”

Rory jumped when the Doctor called him in before hesitantly opening the door more and stepping inside.

“Take a seat,” the Doctor said, not looking at him but staring at the painting above the fireplace.

Rory went to move a cardigan off a chair when the Doctor yelped “Don’t touch the clothes!” He’d just avoided touching the garment. With a peculiar look at the Doctor, Rory moved to the other end of the couch and sat down.

“Couldn’t sleep?” the Doctor asked after a small, awkward silence.

“No. Amy’s out like a light, though. Didn’t want to wake her,” Rory explained. “I honestly didn’t mean to eavesdrop-“

“Think nothing of it,” the Doctor waved his concerns away.

“Who was she?”

“Rory Pond,” the Doctor said, looking him in the eye for the first time that evening. “Let me tell you a story, the oldest story in the Universe. The love story of a girl, a Bad Wolf and a mad man in a blue box who still loves them.”


End file.
